LONG BORDER, ENDLESS STRUGGLE

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The border fence behind Manuel Zamora's home suggests strength and protection, its steel poles perfectly aligned just beyond the Rio Grande. But every night, the crossers come. After dark and at sunup, too, illegal immigrants scale the wall or walk around it, announced by the yelps of backyard dogs.

“Look,” Zamora said early one recent morning, “here they come now.” He pointed toward his neighbor's yard, where a young man in a dark sweatshirt and white sneakers sprinted toward the road, his breath visible in the winter dawn. Three others followed, rushing to a white sedan that arrived at the exact moment their feet hit the pavement.

“I don't know how the government can stop it,” Zamora said, watching the car drive away. “It's impossible to stop the traffic. You definitely can't stop it with laws or walls.”

The challenge has tied Congress in knots for decades, and as lawmakers in Washington pursue an overhaul of immigration rules, the debate on what to do about border security resumes.

Many areas that used to be popular crossing points have experienced improvements. Migrant shelters across from El Paso are often empty. A generation after San Diego was overrun with thousands of illegal immigrants daily, Border Patrol agents and deportees in Tijuana say the chances of reaching Southern California are remote, with odds of success at 1 in 10, or worse.

And yet, it is clear to those who live along the boundary with Mexico, or who try to protect it, that there is no such thing as a completely secure border, just as there are no cities without crime. Even in areas with towering walls and drones or helicopters overhead, border security can be breached. “The U.S. border with Mexico is better controlled than at any time in our history,” said Robert C. Bonner, who served as commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection under President George W. Bush. But there is a lack of understanding about the challenge. “The terrain can be quite different depending on what part of the border you are talking about, and there are different ways, different tactics really, that need to be brought into play,” he said. “And this requires almost mile-by-mile analysis.”

‘BE SMARTER'

Suly Ochoa, 56, a home-health-care aide whose home sits along the border wall in Granjeno, Texas, says what she wants from border policy is simple: “It needs to be smarter.”

Like many in this town of 303 that was founded under Spanish rule in 1767, she and her family have seen illegal immigrants cross for decades.

They have often helped the most desperate, calling ambulances for children or pregnant women. But residents have become increasingly concerned about security, as drug gangs seized the business of moving people and narcotics. Crime in McAllen, Texas, while low, occasionally includes what appear to be targeted killings.

Ochoa said she and others had hoped the $20 million border wall – a 1.7 mile stretch of concrete and dirt rising 18 feet – would help them feel safer. Now, a few years after completion, it looks to her more like a waste. “It's not working at all,” she said, standing near the wall. “To me, it's money down the drain.”

Part of the problem is that the fences and walls cover a limited area in the Rio Grande Valley sector – just under 54 miles staking out a relatively straight boundary near the 316 curving miles of river border. And even within the fenced area, because of the riverfront farms and parks, there are several gated openings.

Ochoa says she sees drug loads at least once a week – large pickup trucks with bales of marijuana barely covered with a tarp. Crossings occur almost every night, usually in groups of 10 to 20.

Yet Border Patrol officials say they are doing more than ever. In the 1990s agents here recall not having a budget to keep gas tanks full. Now staffing levels have more than tripled, to about 2,500 agents. Additional intelligence comes from drones and helicopters, along with state-owned cameras set up to track wildlife. The Border Patrol has also received help from the National Guard.

GULF CARTEL COUNTRY

Criminal organizations dominate Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, and they have made smuggling a sophisticated monopoly. The Gulf Cartel controls access to the river – the Rio Bravo in Mexico – and beats or kills those who try to cross without paying.

On weekends, smugglers often rush across from several points, which means more drugs and immigrants are caught – and more get through. Smugglers have also become masters of decoys and delays. Ochoa said she has seen smaller cars pulled over, followed by trucks that slip by while the authorities are tied up.

On one occasion, dozens of agents spent several hours tracking a group of migrants who had crossed the river between Ochoa and Zamora's small towns. The migrants had tripped a ground sensor, and then a drone and a helicopter equipped with heat-detecting cameras confirmed their presence. Slowly, the teams moved in, on horses, in trucks and on all-track vehicles.

The impressive display yielded a mixed result. A few officers walked three men up from the brush, along with two teenage boys and a young woman. All but one came from Central America and would be sent back.

But that was just part of the group. Eight others had gotten away, along with the two guides, who appeared to have fled back across the river into Mexico. The next morning, Zamora saw the four migrants cross in front of him.

Leaning on a steel pole for support, his 77 years looking more like 88, he said that as long as illegal immigrants could find work, people would come. He knew it because it was his own experience. Though legal now, as a boy more than 60 years ago, he swam across the same river to pursue the American dream.

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